Corn ethanol trying to ride the Gulf spill to higher volumes
Posted May 6, 2010 in Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, RFA delivered a letter to President Obama urging immediate solution and long-term strategies in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly both are needed, but unfortunately RFA’s solutions amount to using more corn ethanol today and even more tomorrow, which is really no solution at all. Given the economic cost that corn ethanol imposes on the Gulf of Mexico every summer in the form the dead zone caused largely by nitrogen running off corn fields all along the Mississippi, more corn ethanol would be demonstrably bad for the very people most heavily impacted by the oil spill.
NRDC staff are in the region working to support the local groups that will have to respond first and most directly to the devastation the oil spill will cause. (Search the tag “gullspill” for a wealth of NRDC posts on the spill.) We’ve also offered a package of real immediate solutions and long-term strategies. They’re summarized here, and include immediately a moratorium on new offshore oil drilling, stronger rules on drilling and an independent investigation and for the long-term passing a climate bill that will drive drive investments in the fuel economy of our cars and trucks and truly sustainable and low-carbon alternatives to oil including electrification and advanced biofuels. As I’ve written about before, on biofuels the most important thing Congress and President Obama can do is stop subsidizing big oil and old corn ethanol through the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credits, which is a $5.4 billion per year give away to these companies for obeying the law. Instead our tax dollars should go to real solutions such as wind, solar, electric cars and biofuels that actually help clean up the water rather than just substituting one form of pollution for another.
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Comments
JamesAndrew — May 6 2010 03:45 PM
I agree that we need to invest in wind and solar but disagree with you on VEETC. It isn't costing the Gov't any thing because they actually make money off of it. Also, without VEETC, 100k plus jobs would be lost. Just look at the bio-diesel industry for proof since I am sure you diagree. It's understood corn ethanol is not the long term solution but the infrastructure is in place to start America on a path towards energy independence.
Joe Irvin — May 9 2010 01:10 PM
Well stated, JamesAndrew, it is key to believe that the perfect and the good must remain friends. California's efforts to expand E85 infrastructure is in a fragile state at best right now due to unfair ILUC assumptions. Consumers aren't getting a balanced message about fuel choices.
A graduated VEETC that provides incentives to move towards non-corn ethanol over a 5 to 10 year period would make sense and support domestic, renewable energy production. The hypoxic runoff dilemma can't be ignored, and there again, science and industry must collaborate towards working solutions.
Doc Peabody — May 10 2010 09:07 AM
As a country, we're going nowhere in our efforts to be energy independent because of our myopic tendencies. Some at NRDC tend to pick apart any near term renewable energy solutions that might be imperfect (such as ethanol) while offering "immediate solutions and long-term strategies" that really aren't long-term solutions at all. Let's embrace ethanol as an imperfect partial solution that's still far better for our country than what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico.